With The Lucretian Renaissance , Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable... more...

De Rerum Natura is a first century BC epic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in dactylic hexameter, is divided into six books, and concentrates heavily on Epicurean physics. It deals with the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul;... more...

Based on the understanding of the term rhetoric that transcends the notion of literary genre, this book offers new answers to the questions of the provenance and the role of the main rhetorical strategies in Lucretius? De rerum natura. more...

A collection of important scholarly articles on the Roman poet Lucretius, whose philosophical epic, the De Rerum Natura or On the Nature of the Universe (c.55 BC), seeks to convince its readers of the validity of the rationalist theories of Epicurus. An Introduction contextualizes the essays, and all Greek and Latin is translated. - ;This book gathers... more...

Martin Ferguson Smith's work on Lucretius is both well known and highly regarded. However, his 1969 translation of De Rerum Natura long out of printis virtually unknown. Readers will share our excitement in the discovery of this accurate and fluent prose rendering. For this edition, Professor Smith provides a revised translation, new... more...

`Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind Not by the sun's rays, nor the bright shafts of day, Must be dispersed, as is most necessary, But by the face of nature and her laws.' Lucretius' poem On the Nature of the Universe combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense... more...